NESQLUG News

e

O

1 NESQLUG NEWS

H The Journal of Record of

1 New England Sinclair QL User Group

H Vol 1 No 4

! “A Beacon to Guide the Wandering Sojourner Home from the Abyss of Confusion”

r Ar OHS See ee A A ar eee, J

EDITOR'S NOTES

With the new year comes new
things. Notwithstanding that this is
still Volume 1 of NESQLUG News (our
year runs July to June), January
brings many changes.

First, as our director reminds us, it
is time to re-affirm/select people for
jobs. He is most eloquent in setting
out his appeal.

Second, we move to the monthly
schedule of meetings. (Remember it
is the first Saturday of odd
numbered months, and the first
Sunday of even months.)

Third, we have joined the rest of
the QL world. We have joined
SNUG, the Sinclair North American
User Group and are now officially a
sub-Group of Quanta.

As to SNUG, we joined as support of
the concept and to access their QL
library of software. We encourage
them to live up to their promise.

QUANTA is more self-serving. It
costs us nothing, but it notifies
QUANTA members throughout the
world that journeys to this shore
need not mean a foray into a land
totally devoid of reason. For many
European visitors, Boston is the
prefered port-of-entry, and we hope
to have visitors to our meetings.

We even believe with all our hearts
that when the world knows we exist
the local economy will rebound.

DIRECTORY
Director
Treasurer
Membership Se'xy
Librarian

Newsletter Liason

NESQLUG NEWS

Al Boehm, 33 Selfridge Rd, Bedford, MA 01730
Dick Taylor, 309 Holly Cir,

Ed Kingsley, 16 Highland Ave, Saugus, MA 01906
Editor Peter Hale, 195 Central Ave, Chelsea, MA 02150
Fred Romer, 31 Fowler St, Jamestown, RI 02835

The NESQLUG NEWS is the Journal

of the New England Sinclair QL User
Group. It is. published bi-monthly.

Annual membership is 310.00 in
North America. Overseas members
pay higher to cover air mail.

We meet monthly on the first Sat-
urday of odd-numbered months and
the first Sunday of even numbered
months. If that's a holiday weekend,
we meet the following weekend.

NEXT MEETINGS

NESQLUG meets from 11:00am to
4:00pm, Saturday, January 5, at the
home of Al & Dorothy Boehm, 33
Selfridge Road, Bedford, MA. Call
(617) 275-1097 for directions. Come
9:00 to 10:00 for coffee and set up.

In February, it meets from 1:00pm
to 4:00pm, Sunday, February 3, at
the home of Peter Hale, 195 Central
Ave., Chelsea, MA. Call (617) 889-
0830 for directions.
SuperBASIC programming tips.

Our exchange policy is simple: we-
send-you-ours-if-you-send-us-yours
(WSYOIYSUY) and you have
something to say about the QL.

Please forward exchange issues to
Frederick Romer, 31 Fowler St.,
Jamestown, RI 02835.

Unless copywritten by the author,

articles are in the public domain.
Attribution is requested.

Tiverton, RI 02878

-1- January/February 1993+

The topic is

phone
(617) 275-1097
(401) 624-2035

(617) 233-3671
(617) 889-0830
(401) 423-2688

SUGGESTED
MEETING
TOPICS:

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January/February 1991

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CONTENTS

Editor’ Notes

Next Meeting

Meeting Minutes

Directions from the Director

QL Journey, QDOS and SuperBASIC
Using EYE-Q and IMAGIX
NESQLIBrary Update

Lighthouses

Questionnaire results

00 - FP CI Nm =

MEETING MINUTES
by Dorothy Boehm, Secretary

The New England QL Sinclair Group
met at the home of Al and Dorothy
Boehm on November 3, 1990. 14
people were present: Al and Dorothy
Boehm, Gary Norton, Dick Taylor,
Bill Cable, Norm Shein, Roy Arsen-
ault, Will Horton, Mike Jonas, Sherm
Waterman, Fred Romer, Peter Hale,
Mike Mitchell and Ed Kingsley.

Dick Taylor demonstrated a graphics
and math program developed by
Chalmers University in Sweden.
Quanta offers the package.

Al Boehm showed a 3-D Graphics
program (3D Graph) from QL World
that adds 3-D graphs to Easel. The
graphics are fantastic! He also de-
monstrated the use of DO commands
to set printers.

A Jupiter program was demonstrated
by Will Horton. This program shows
the location of Jupiter's four large
moons for a given [Earth] date/time.

Fred Romer showed three games he
converted to the QL from the ZX
computer. They are: Breakout with
high score, Ghost Chaser, and
Countryside scene (graphics).

Peter Hale demonstrated Calc, a pop
up calculator with scientific calcula-
tor features: memory, constants and
conversion between hex, decimal,
octal and binary numbers. A multi-
tasking version is available from the
QL World microdrive exchange.

Mike Mitchell demonstrated a
program to concatenate two or more
binar y files that require RESPRing.

(Cont page 10)

NESQLUG NEWS =s

DIRECTIONS FROM
THE DIRECTOR
by Al Boehm .

We have officially become:
1. A QUANTA sub-group
2. A group member of SNUG

At the January 5th meeting I hope
to have more on the eagerly sought
privileges and august responsibili-
ties of such status. ['stati'? - Ed]

At the January meeting we will also
elect/reaffirm NESQLUG officers. My
personal philosophy is that we all
help out, but additionally, almost
every one should be in charge of
something. Rotating assignments :
frequently is usually a good thing.

I believe I have three responsibili-
ties (in order of priority):

1. Set up/clean up after meetings.

2. Set a meeting agenda.

3. Make executive decisions between
meetings.

None of the tasks are onerous, but
I barely have time to do them all
justice. In short, if anyone wants
any of my tasks, they are welcome
to give them a shot. On the other
hand, I'm willing to continue to do
the above if everyone is comfortable
with my shortcomings.

There has been a complaint about
unauthorized copying of copyright
programs. If you haven't heard,
become familiar with what has been
written on this topic. In the end,
it is the user who loses the most.

In a similar situation a church
group widely distributed bootleg
copies of a hymnal. After all, it was
singing for God. The publisher sued
and was granted a large ($Ms)
settlement. After all, it was the law.
But the money was too late to help
the publisher continue to print the
hymnal. The church group lost, the
publisher lost, but most of all the
singers lost because you can't find
the songs in that hymnal anymore.

QL software developers are an
endangered species. Support them.

January/February 1991

QL JOURNEY: ODDS 'N ENDS
IN QDOS & SUPERBASIC
by Gary Norton

At first glance, SuperBASIC appears
to be not too different from some of
the other BASICs I have been
involved with.

But, there is one very important
difference. Here is a BASIC language
that is structured. In my college
BASIC course, I learned that BASIC
was a computer language taught as
an introduction to computer pro-
gramming, and the student was then
expected to advance to a "useful"
language such as COBOL or
FORTRAN. The "B" in BASIC afterall
stands for "Beginner's".

At first, I ignored the structure in
SuperBASIC. If unstructured BASIC
was good enough for other PCs, I
figured it was alright for use on
the QL. SuperBASIC was even des-
igned to let users ignore structure,
if desired. But, the more I became
involved with it, the more | realized
its advantages. This was most
apparent when keying in programs
from sources such as QL World.

Now, when I
unstructured BASIC
seems so archaic!

encounter an
program, it

The designers of SuperBASIC [Tony
Tebby and Jan Jones - Ed] truly
put it into the class of higher order
language (HOL) with the above
mentioned COBOL and FORTRAN, as
well as C, Ada, etc.

An even more innovative approach
taken in the QL was to allow the
the programming language to be
integrated with the operating sys-
tem (QDOS). Accessing the opera-
ting system from within a BASIC
program gives the programmer great
latitude in operations such as con-
trolling 1/0 devices.

It is this area that initially seemed
most confusing. An example is a line
such as:

1000 OPEN #3, SCR_400X200a20X50.

Could this possibly be used in a

NESQLUG NEWS -3-

BASIC program? This line creates a
window 400 pixels wide, 200 pixels
high, starting at x coordinate 20
and y coordinate 50 (the upper left
hand corner is at x coordinate 20
and y coordinate 50). The Xs and
the a are separators. In high res
mode, MODE 4, the QL has a maxi-
mum window of 512 x 256 pixels, and
in low res, MODE 8, the QL has a
maximum window of 256 x 256 pixels.

The default monitor screen is
composed of three assigned win-
dows. Channel #1 is the right half
of the screen, channel #2 is the left
half of the screen and channel $0 is
the bottom horizontal portion.

The above SCR command can be

created starting with channel #3
and continuing to as many windows
as required. The created window
can be enhanced with PAPER, INK,
BORDER, etc.

Below is a sampling of other
commands and explanations that may
not be obvious to QL novices.

CON is similar to SCR, but input
from the keyboard is allowed. The
parameters used with CON are
similar to those used with SCR;
however, an underscore’ separator
and a number are tacked onto the
end to set the keyboard type-ahead
buffer length (i.e. the number of
characters that can be entered in
advance into the keyboard buffer.)

An example, taken from our SCR
sample is:

1000 OPEN #3, CON_400X200a20X50_1
28.

which give 128 characters of speed
typing while the QL is doing
something else.

SER is used to set the parameters
of either of the two RS232 serial
ports, SERÍ and SER2, located in
the back of the QL. (SER without a
number is read as SER1.)

An example of its use would be:
1000 OPEN #3, SERIehr.

This means that a device is connec-
(Cont page 11)

January/February 1991

but GO SUB!
B) I was £
Number, but

In the first
b" twice in
NESQLIB he:
reset the v
The right sı

Now that I'
culpa's. In
verlantly cr
was only or
were contaii
January wit

In reunitin:
transfers p
has since b

LI
The logo
depicts a

beam a :
vessel to <
how many
house, as

its origin t

Yes, a bli.
for the mi
many of ou

'Way back
Irishman, a
occurring |
sat in hi.
raging sto:
the time wl

Ile was exp
covered sc
metal screw
wind woulc
and thereb
the water,

While he w
the ass bh
a gust œr 1
drove the
sand, wher
to remove 1

videnced by
esent at the
en nd one
as 1t Rhode

dy, let's get
ded project.
and shared
ipply. Take

S. Waterman
F. Romer

G. Norton
F. Romer

J. Blaho

F. Romer

W. Cable
Jonas
e Boehm
J. Blaho

W. Cable

P. Hale

M. Jonas

A. Boehm
M. Jonas

- Ostrander
D. Burns

lt. Arsenault
te Arsenault
D. Lewis III
. Ostrander
M. Jonas

F. Romer

ly. I was
SLIB Front
d behaving
cause, the

Subroutine
in, maybe,

USING EYE-Q AND IMAGIX
TO DRAW LIGHTHOUSES
by Hugh H. llowie

[Recently Hugh was challenged to
enlarge on the concept of our light-
house logo. He is an accomplished
user of graphics drawing programs
and sent me a number of draft
outlines which are reproduced, after
much reduction, in our centerfold -
Playboy eat your heart out.

As a group we have few people
interested in graphics, and to the
best of my knowledge, none have
Digital Precision's Eye-q.

Hugh also uses Imagix, a PD screen
dump for Epson compatible printers.
It is a highly versatile program. It
can expand and reduce an image in
both length and width, reverse it,
and set the image resolution. It
can be multi-tasked.

What follows are notes from his
cover letter. For 'Stages' think
figure in the overleaf. -Ed]

Enclosed you will find a few
pictures showing the development of
an idea, based on your Lighthouse.
I have retained the QL in the light
as 1 thing that was an inspiration.

As to whether the end result is
acceptable or not, remains for
others than myself to decide. If the
basis is acceptable, but changes are
required, I am villing to try and
improve whatever. I will probably
be doing that anyway as I go along.
The reason for sending such a lot
is to enable you to make a selection,
and show developement of the idca.

Stage 1, Lighthouse 4 Skeleton
Stage being picture submitted, and
LH number of LightHouse selected.

Stage 2, LH 9 Beam added, and also
billowing waves, and name.

Stage 3, LH 10 Changed to pond
effect with boat.

Stage 4, LH 13 Boat removed. Wave

effect added to pond. Club initials
added to 'mast'. Note separation of

NESQLUG NEWS -4-

initials.

Stage 5, LH 14 'Ring' at rear lower-
cd slightly.

Stage 6, LH 16 Ring removed from
ripple of waves to give more
spacious feeling.

Stage 7, LH 16 Printed using
IMAGIX', Verticle stretch factor of
2, and 'R' for reverse image, F5 for
centre print.

Stage 8, LH 17 This is LH 16 with
the beam colour changed. Printed
using 'IMAGIX', Vert. Stretch 2, but
using 'N'ormal printout. This gives
the effect of the light shining out
at night.

I have added a little quote which
may project my feeling on this.
“As the sun rises in the East to
brighten and adorn the day, so the
LightHouse is placed to cast its
light across the waters to guide the
traveller". Corny I admit, but you
can see the light reflected on the
waves at base.

I hope you like this, and if not
used I will not worry. When I first
started this project, I thought it
was going to be easy. I soon
discovered what an excellent job
Joyce had done. I have no idea
whether I would have used 'QL' on
the light, but seeing it there, I felt
it was very appropriate, so am glad
to leave it.

The 'mast' of the lighthouse was
rather stark and bare, so I decided
to use the initials as adornment,
and was very lucky that the letters
divided up as they did to suit the
bands.

I enjoy doing this sort of thing. I
guess it brings out a bit of the
creative features in most of us,

Getting close to Christmas, so I wish
all the best to you and yours in
this festive season and in the
coming year.

January/February 1991

|

fics”
|

=

—

et
n
AS

LHI?

STAGE a

UCA o> ima VEAT TaT 3

la

YES + inasi

ler a

ide te, travel

(9

I

the “taking”
last meeting.
from
Island?)

I'd ' xe to point out to all those who are saying,
on with ofher things", that the Library project is
There are a finite number of programs available t

NESQLIBrary UPDATE
by Ed Kingsley

was heartened to see

a renewed interest in the Library as evidenced by
of (14) programs to type-in by eight of those present at the

I received (7) programs from three people present and one
A. P. Lewis III, a member currently in absentia.

(or was it Rhode
Thank you all for your continued efforts.

“enough, already, let's get

not an open ended project.
o be typed in and shared

and we are, in fact, already approaching the end of the known supply. Take
heart, take a program.

P R O GRAMS

ür ͥ ͥ d a n n

-10 Cr de com
. e © «© © e o

pa pe pa (O CO
.

Aardvark

3D Graph Generator
Background Music
Graph Plotter

3D Naughts/Crosses
Giro

Pentathelete
Picture Puzzle
Radar

. Sliding Puzzle
. Tiger
- Mode 4 Color Editor

Turtle Fractals

Character Write

. DI Y - PARAMETERS
- DI Y - PEEK/POKES
- DI Y - TUNE/SPEED
„Data Maker/Loader
File Search

. List

NUN Function

22. Renum Revised

26

- Round Numbers
Save Variables
- Sorting Routines

VecText

27. XREF

*

IN

Help put me out of a job - please.

P R O G R E S S

= programs taken at the May meeting (hint, hint)

S. Waterman
F. Romer

G. Norton

F. Romer

J. Blaho

F. Romer

W. Cable

M. Jonas

A. Boehm

J. Blaho

W. Cable

P. Hale

M. Jonas

A. Boehm

M. Jonas

S. Ostrander
D. Burns

R. Arsenault
R. Arsenault

A. P. Lewis III

S. Ostrander
M. Jonas
F. Romer

Fred Romer discovered that PIC Castle bas doesn't work correctly. I was
puzzled because I knew it WAS working when I appended the "NESLIB Front

End” to the listing.
badly.

The author had:

1) Used a GO SUB(routine)
2) Used a variable to represent the Line Number address of the Subroutine

A) We don't use GO SUB's in SuperBASIC; a GOTO now and again, maybe,

NESQLUG NEWS

AE

When I checked it out, however, it was indeed behaving
A few moments checking over the program revealed the cause, the
sure and a 'great' example of how NOT to program.

January/February 1991

USING
TO D
by

[Recently E
enlarge
house À 2.
user of grs
and sent

outlines whi
much reduc
Playboy eat

As a grou
interested i
best of my
Digital Preci

Hugh also 1
dump for E;
It is a high
can expand
both length
and set th
can be mult

What follow
cover lette:
figure im th

Enclused y
pictures 0
an idea, Da:
I have reta
as I thing t

As to whet
acceptable

others than
basis is acc
required, I
improve wh
be doing th.
The reason
is to enable
and show de

Stage 1,
Stage being
LH number «

Stage 2, LH
billowing wa

Stage 3, L
effect with `

Stage 4,
effect addec
added to 'm

ine creates a
>, 200 pixels
oordinate 20
e per left
ootuinate 20
The Xs and
In high res
has a maxi-
6 pixels, and
ne QL has a
x 256 pixels.

screen is
signed win-
he right half
#2 is the left
channel #0 is
rtion.

and can be
channel #3
¡any windows
ated window
PAPER, INK,

r of other
ons that may
vs.

ty but input
lowed. The
h CON are
| with SCR;
re separator
ced onto the
d type-ahead
> number of
2 entered in
ard buffer.)

om our SCR

X200a20X50_1

ers of speed
L is doing

e parameters
RS232 serial
» located in
ER without a

d pa

= would be:

> is connec-
ont page 11).

„„

a

at

a

but GO SUB's, NEVER. THAT's what PROCcdures are for.
B) I was surprised that you could even use a variable to represent a Line
Number, but amazed thal anyone would want to.

[Using variables to Goto/Gosub line numbers was a ‘feature’ of the original
Sinclair Basic. Not only was it permitted, it was encouraged, as a memory
saving trick, and was particularly useful in menus - Ed]

In the first line of the program the author set b=24. He then called "GOSUB
b" twice in the program. I had renumbered the listing in order to add the
NESQLIB header and screwed up his calls. My apologies. The quick fix is to
reset the variable 'b' to b=330 or substitute 330 for 'b' at the GO SUB's.
The right solution, however, is to never, never, ever program like that.

Now that I've chastened someone else, it's time once again for my own mea
culpa's. In the course of organizing the database for the Library, I inad-
vertantly created two separate files. The NESQLIB_dbf on the Library Disk
was only one of the two and therefore short a dozen or so records which
were contained in the other file. The reunited databases will be available in
January with some improvments in record handling and screen graphics.

In reuniting the databases, I became aware of some of the Import/Export
transfers possible between Abacus and Archive which was a great help and
has since been of value in other ways.

a A

LIGHTHOUSES This night that memory came back
by Hugh Howie to him, as he pondered how to
mount a lighthouse on the sand-bar

The logo on Newsletter cover which had wrecked so many ships.

depicts a Lighthouse spreading its
beam across the ocean, to guide the
vessel to a safe haven. I wonder
how many realise that the Light-
house, as it is known today, owes
its origin to a blind man?

Next day he had his son take him
out in the boat to the sand-bar,
where they drove a large screw into
the sand, and left it there.

A few tides later they returned to
the sand-bar, and the sérew was
still fixed firmly in place.

Yes, a blind man was responsible
for the method of construction of
many of our Beacons of Help.

From there it was a short step to
get someone to try this method to
build a lighthouse on the sand. It
was tried, and it worked.

Way back many years ago, an
Irishman, aware of the many deaths
occurring because of storms at sea,
sat in .his chair listening to. a
raging storm and thought back to

This is why you often see
the time when he could see.

lighthouses built on what should be
infirm ground. The screw going
deep into the sand gives a firm
base .for a structure, thus saving
countless lives,

lle was experimenting with a canvas
covered screw connected to a large
metal screw. The idea was that the
wind would turn the canvas screw |
and thereby turn the metal screw in

This is a true story. The man was
the water, and thus drive his boat.

Alex Mitchell. His son was John.
The first lighthouse built by this

While he was experimenting, he laid method was on the Maplin Sands.

the assembly down on the sand, and
a gust of wind turned the 'sail' and
drove the metal screw into the
sand, wherefrom he had a struggle
to remove il. & ia

Alex Mitchell died in 1868.

There are none so blind as they
who will not see.

NESOLUG News — R- Tannaro /Pohriuarw 1001

Questionnaire Results
by Ed Kingsley o

I received (13) questionnaires out of a possible (31) which, as surveys go,
was pretty good. Normal response is about 20% and we had 40%. Thank you
for your support. See results below.

MULTIBASIC_doc mentions that Simon Goodwin would be offering an expanded,
improved version of the program at a future date. Then is now. He is
offering his heretofor published DIY Toolkit Utilities in a -collection of (12)
volumes at £3 ($6) per volume with an initial charge per order of £4 ($8).
One volume has MULTIBASIC and includes the anticipated screen saving
facility he had not included in the published program (the Library version).

QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS: (13 out of 31)

ROM JSU (7) JS, MG, MINERVA (6)

TV / MONITOR MonoTV (1) MonoMON (4) CMON (8)

MDV / FLOPPY MDV (3) FLP2 (8) FLP4 (2)

DISK FORMAT 3.5" (2) 5.25" (6) BOTH (2)

RAM SIZE | 128K (2) 384K (1) 640K (4) 896K (6)

TOOLKIT 2 NO (3) YES (10)

MODEM YES (5) USE IT (2) NO (3)

# OF QL's ONE (1) TWO (5) THREE (4) FOUR (2) SIX (1)!

# QL's WORK'G SAME# (6) FEWER (7)

NETWORK QL's NO (10) YES (3)

WORD PROCESSOR QUILL (9) Text87 (2) EDITOR (2)

FRONT END NONE (5) QRAM (3) ICE (2) TASKMASTER (4)

ACCELERATOR SPEEDSCREEN (4) LIGHTNING (4)

IBM EMULATOR SOLUTION (1) CONQUERER (3)

PROGRAM IN SUPERBASIC (12) ASSEMBLY (3) PASCAL (3)
ARCHIVE (3) FORTRAN (2) "c" (3)

BASIC COMPILER QLIBERATOR (1) SUPERCHARGE (2) TURBOCH(3)

READ MAGAZINE QL WORLD (4) UPDATE (1) QUANTA (1)

SUBSCRIBE MAG QL WORLD (4) UPDATE (9) QUANTA (2)

N O R NM A L. PRO GRAM U S A G EB

NEVER ALMOST ONCE IN FAIRLY A LOT
NEVER A WHILE OFTEN

WORD PROCESSOR (1) (0) (3) (2) (1)
ABACUS (3) (2) (3) (2) (3)
ARCHIVE. (2) (2) (4) (2) (3)
AS EL. (4) (3) (6) (0) (0)
Al (12) (1) (0) (0) (0)
GAMES (4) (4) (3) (1) (1)
GRAPHICS (4) (2) (6) (1) (0)
UTILITIES (2) (1) (3) (4) (3)
COMPUTER Business (4)
INTERESTS: Database (3)

Education (2)

Financial (2)

Writing Software (2) ;
Assembly Programming (2)
Games .
Graphics

Simulations

NESQLUG NEWS - 9 - January/February 1991

CC

Editor" Notes
Next Meeting
Meeting Minu
Directions fr:
QL Jourr .

Using EYESQ
NESQLIBrary
Lighthouses

Questionnaire

MEE TI:
by Dorot

The New En,
met at the
Boehm on!
people were
Boehm, Gar:
Bill Cable, 1
ault, Will Ho
Waterman, F
Mike Mitchel

Dick Taylor
and math

Chalmers
Quanta offer

Al Boehm 8
program T
that add
graphics are
monstrated
to set print

A Jupiter pr
by Will Hort
the location
moons for a

Fred Romer
converted t
computer.

high score
Countryside

Peter Hale c
up calculato
tor features
conversion

octal and bi
tasking ver:
QL World mi

Mike Mite
program
binary files

e o do Gs de cs do Ay do A dp do ap

nfusion”

SP OD ds do du ds de Ey dy oe Ag co ap,

the Journal
lair QL User
bi-monthly.

| $10.00 in
eas members
mail.

e first Sat-
months and
en numbered
lay weekend,
pekend.

INGS

11:00am to
ry 5, at the
Boehm, 33
d, MA. Call
ct: je Come
ind set up.

from 1:00pm
ruary 3, at
195 Central
| (617) 889-
‘he topic is
tips.

simple: we-
nd-us-yours
you have
he QL.

e issues to
Fowler St.,

the author,
lic domain.

— Phone
“ >) 275-1097
t»-1) 624-2035

(617) 233-3671.

(617) 889-0830
(401) 423-2688

tape Sant.

1
!
!
!
l
!

SUGGESTED
MEETING
TOPICS:

Networking (3)
Superbasic (2)

* QDOS
QRAM
Abacus
Pascal

* Archive
Multi-Fonts

* "C" Language
Error Trapping

Basic Extensions (2)

TOPICS QDOS

WILLING Archive

TO "C" Language
TEACH: Mailbag Program

Assembly Language
Monte Carlo Simulation

* Assembly Language id
Checking Account Software

We are a programming bunch. We use our (2.85) QL's with Toolkit 2, expanded

memory, diskdrives and monitors.

¡About half of us have updated ROM's.

We're not into modems, but we do like screen/processing accelerators. With
all it's quirks, Quill is still our Wordprocessor and we use it a lot, Archive,
Abacus and various utilities get good use, but apparently not so Easel or Al.
We read or subscribe to (3) different magazines, several of us reading more
than one. Only a couple of us Network. our QL's, but more of us would if we

knew how.
to find out more about the QL.

Our interests are varied, but often overlapping and we'd all like

* Note that we have (4) matchups between what members would like to hear

discussed and what members are willing to teach us about.
the list of SUGGESTED MEETING TOPICS.

Have a look over
If you know something about any

of them, or any other related topic, that you would like to share with us,

please do one of the following.

Get in touch with Al Boehm to schedule a

talk at an upcoming meeting, or put together an article and send it to Peter

Hale for the Newsletter.

Thanks again to all of you who participated. If you'd still like to be counted,

send me your survey.

The more we know, the more we can help to guide

one another away from that dreaded "ab ss".

MEETING MINUTES Cont from p. 2
The advantage is that all files are
joined into a single file and load
much more swiftly.

Bill Cable showed a SuperBASIC line
indenter to make programs easier to
read, Then he demonstrated two
extensions; MEM, which created a
device in Ram (not a ram-disk) to
store ASCII files and REPLACE, a
keyword to replace one string by
another throughout a file.

During the business meeting, Peter
Hale proposed membership in the
Sinclair North American User Group

for $15 a year for -the newsletter.

This was unanimously approved.

Membership renewal was set for
July i, setting our fiscal year from
July 1 to June 30. Peter Hale
reported that the average cost of
production and mailing for the

DECAY FEF amera aa

_ sub-group

newsletter is $45 for 50 copies.

There was a question concerning
software library policies. Peter Hale
suggested distributing disks only to
members, without money changing
hands, on member-formated disks.
Dick Taylor said he would explore
status in QUANTA.
Foreign library exchanges will be
discussed at the next meeting.

There have been requests to meet
on Sundays in even - months,
particularly for. those who can't
make the Saturday meetings.

Peter Hale proposed a SuperBASIC
workshop at his house on the first
Sunday in February. Sherm Water-
man volunteered his home on the-
Cape for a workshop, There will be
announcements in the newsletters as
to date and location.

ODDS 'N ENDS (Cont from page 3)
ted to the SERÍ port, even parity
has been selected, it is do carry out
handshake, and there is no end of
file marker.

If one is anticipating using this
device control, I refer you to
devices in the CONCEPTS section of
the QL manual.

RESPR is a QDOS function that
allocates resident procedure space.
1000 PRINT RESPR(1024)

will print the base address of a
1024 byte block. The result of the
function (what is printed on the
screen) is the location of the first
address created.

DIV and MOD are two of the many
operators supported by the QL.
Other, more common operators, are +
= >. DIV performs an integer divide.
1000 PRINT A DIV B

gives the same result as INT(A/B).

MOD is an operator that gives the
remainder in a division problem.
The result of:

1000 PRINT 5 MOD 2

is 1.

INSTR is an operator that simply
indicates where a substring begins
in a string.

1000 PRINT "m” INSTR "lamp"

will give a response 3 because m is
in the third character of lamp. If
the substring was "amp", 2 would
be returned since the beginning of
the substring is at position 2. If
the substring was "x", then the
response would be 0 because a
negative response returns a O.
Thus INSTR is especially useful
creating pointers to locate specific
characters in long long strings.

SEXEC is a QDOS command that may
not be encountered too often unless
you are involved with creating
utility programs. SEXEC is used for
generating program files, usually on
microdrive or disk, that can be
multi-tasking jobs.

The commands EXEC W or EXEC will
run the programs created with
SEXEC.

NESQLUG NEWS - 11-

These are just a few examples of
the commands at your disposal with
the Sinclair QL. The purpose of this
essay is to make the reader aware
of the power of this computer. It
is unique in that not only are the
operating system and the program-
mable language buit in, but they
can be conjunctively executed in a
SuperBASIC program.

If the commands I've selected
increase your curiosity of just what
the QL is capable of, I would
reccommend reviewing the KEYWORD
listing in the QL manual on page 28
of the CONCEPTS section.

And, if you possesá a toolkit, your
keyword listing will increase
significantly.

If you stayed with me, and the next
time you come across one of these
commands in a program listing, and
understand to some degree its
purpose, my efforts haved been
successful.

A reason in undertaking this article
was to brush up on the keywords
myself. This gave an opportunity
to possibly inform and/or motivate
other QL users to become more
knowledgeable about their compu-
ters. Happy computing!

[Editor's note (to fil out the
balance of the page):

Gary's essay should tweak some
curiosity. Clearly he has learned a
lot from the exercise of
keypunching printed programs.

Although virtually all of us key-
punch accurately, not every one has
the confidence to learn SuperBASIC
programming.

I don't understand all that I
keypunch, but I struggle to under-
stand the use of a new cencept or
keyword that I encounter at least
once in a_ while. I have been
fortunate in whittling down the sum
total of my ignorance that way, and
I have been able to do it by not
trying to understand everything at
once.]

January/February 1991

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